Not-for-profit group Waterwise has warned that a gap in the skills and capacity needed to deliver water efficiency in England could stifle potential benefits from retail competition.

The organisation’s director of projects and programmes Aaron Burton wrote, in a column for Utility Week, that water efficiency has been a “key benefit” of retail competition in Scotland, where the market opened in 2008.

“By addressing the skills and capacity gap within the industry we hope to ensure water efficiency remains at the core of service innovation,” he added.

“We also expect customers to benefit more broadly from consistent messaging on water efficiency and benefits across water bills, energy bills and on carbon emissions.”

Waterwise is in the process of developing a non-household water efficiency training programme, which will be based on its existing training programme for household water efficiency awareness.

The programme will launch in late March or early April 2017 and includes two levels.

Level 1 will provide the background to water efficiency, behaviours and retrofit options to support customer call centre staff, business developers and key account managers.

Level 2 will build on the previous level but go into more detail about undertaking a water audit with a customer and the practicalities around retrofitting devices.